Today, managing personal finances has become more accessible thanks to a new generation of budgeting and money management applications. Clarity Money and Truebill (formerly Rocket Money) are two of the most popular options, both of which allow users to manage subscriptions, track spending, save money, and check credit health. 

While both platforms share similar capabilities, each platform has its own set of features, pricing models, and user experiences. This in-depth Clarity vs Truebill comparison breaks down their basic features, benefits, and drawbacks to help you determine which tool best suits your financial requirements. 

Comparing Clarity Vs Truebill: At A Glance

Features 

Clarity 

Truebill 

Spending Tracking 

Historical summaries with basic auto-categorization 

Real-time tracking with visual insights and custom categorization rules 

Budgeting 

Simple, goal-based budgeting with smart suggestions 

Flexible budgeting with custom limits, alerts, and real-time tracking 

Account Aggregation 

Multi-account view with automated savings into Marcus 

Full financial overview with premium syncing and household access options 

Bill Negotiator 

AI-assisted bill negotiation with a 33% success fee 

Expert-led bill negotiation, including bank fees, insurance, and utilities (35–60% fee) 

Credit Score Monitoring 

Monthly Experian VantageScore 3.0 updates 

Full credit report access with real-time score alerts and detailed insights 

Pricing 

Free-To-Use (monetized through referrals) 

Free core Plan: Premium starts from $6 – $12/month 

What Is Clarity?

Clarity Money is a finance and budgeting application that helps users take charge of their money. It uses machine learning to deliver actionable insights, manage subscriptions, reduce costs, and optimize spending. 

Acquired by Goldman Sachs in 2018, the platform combines several financial reporting and management tools into a single platform. 

Unique Features Of Clarity 

  • Money Alerts: Notifies its users regarding the upcoming pay days, due dates for bills, and potential overspending while suggesting credit cards that best suit their requirements 
  • Debt Payoff Assistance: Offers tailored debt payoff strategies by analyzing existing debts and determining the most effective payment methods. This strategy aims to reduce interest costs and accelerate the debt repayment process 
  • Bill Lowering Service: Negotiates bills on customer's behalf and charges a portion of the savings only if it gets successful, making cost-cutting simple

Pros And Cons 

Pros 

  • Excellent and intuitive user interface (UI) helps with smoother navigation 
  • Delivers highly customizable features to fit individual financial needs 
  • Automatically tracks and categorizes the charges for better spending visibility 

Cons 

  • The platform lacks tools for splitting transactions and managing cash 
  • No independent security verification, raising concerns about data privacy and user trust 

What Is Truebill?

Truebill, now rebranded as Rocket Money, is a personal finance app that helps users manage subscriptions, track spending, lower bills, and build their savings. 

It connects securely to your bank and credit card accounts via Plaid, categorizes transactions, and highlights recurring charges that users can cancel directly from the app. 

Unique Features Of Truebill 

  • Net Worth Tracking: Provides users with a centralized view of their financial situation by calculating total assets minus liabilities. It combines account data, including bank accounts, investments, and debts, into a single dashboard, updating in real-time to reflect financial progress 
  • Autopilot Savings/ Smart Savings: Automatically deposits money into The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)savings account based on cash flow analysis. This optimizes timing to meet goals faster and minimize overdrafts 
  • Visa Signature Card Integration: Allows users to manage their credit cards directly within the app, earning 5% cash back toward a down payment and closing costs on all purchases. Cardholders can track their spending, enable SmartPay, and manage card settings seamlessly from the app 

Pros And Cons 

Pros 

  • Efficient budgeting support helps avoid unnecessary expenses and stay in control of spending 
  • Automatically manages and monitors spending across multiple credit cards, avoiding overlooked balances 
  • Helps identify forgotten subscriptions automatically, assisting users to cancel them and prevent future charges 

Cons 

  • Some users noted that the app crashes and logs the user out when accessing the recurring section 
  • The budgeting tool lacks some advanced features 

Clarity Vs Truebill: Key Features Comparison

1. Spending Track

Clarity focuses on helping users understand their spending patterns, enabling them to focus on what is important and reduce unnecessary purchases. It shows how much someone has spent on a specific item in their budget, like Stack Bucks, over the course of a week, month, or year.

It then allows them to examine all of their Star Bucks transactions. It's an excellent approach to finding and closing holes in your expenditure that might otherwise go unreported.

Trubill's ‘Pending Insights’ module helps users understand their financial habits by automatically categorizing transactions and providing them with clear visual summaries. It tracks spending in real time, allowing users to see where their money goes on a weekly or monthly basis.

Users can also create custom rules to reclassify or split transactions, making the insights more personalized and accurate. Truebill helps its users make smarter budgeting decisions by highlighting trends and warning them when they reach their set limits.

Winner: Truebill (Rocket Money) wins this round due to its real-time tracking, custom rules, and alert features, while Clarity Money falls short in its more basic spending summaries.

2. Budgeting

Clarity Money helps you save for a vacation, pay off debt, and improve your financial situation. It also enables you to easily create personalized budgeting tools based on your income, expenses, and financial goals. The app provides insights on how much you should allocate to various categories, like groceries, transportation, entertainment, and more.

Truebill enables users to create monthly budgets by predicting revenue, tracking recurring bills, and customizing spending categories to suit their needs. Users can set up as many budget categories as they like, manually adjust the limitations, and track their spending in real-time.

Timely alerts notify users as they approach certain limitations, making it simpler to stay on track. This tool helps ease financial planning and encourages better money management.

Winner: Tie. Clarity is most suited for simple, goal-based budgeting, while Truebill is best for companies seeking more control over real-time tracking and customization.

3. Account Aggregation

Clarity enables users to consolidate multiple banks, credit, savings, investment, loan, and bill accounts into a single dashboard, providing a comprehensive financial overview. By securely pooling transactions and balance data, it enables real-time spending insights, detects periodic payments, and facilitates simpler money transfers, including automatic savings into your Marcus account.

This simplified aggregation makes it easier to manage balances, monitor cash flow, and find hidden expenses in a visually appealing and easy-to-navigate feed.

Truebill enables users to securely consolidate all their financial accounts, including checking, savings, credit cards, investments, and loans, using Plaid, allowing them to view their entire financial picture in one single dashboard. It automatically imports transactions and balance data, providing real-time insight into user income, expenditures, recurring expenses, savings, and net worth.

Premium customers also receive balance synching and shared access with partners for joint household budgeting and subscription management.

Winner: It's a tie, as both platforms provide secure, real-time account aggregation. Clarity stands out for its automated savings integration, whilst Truebill takes an edge for its partner access and premium balance syncing.

4. Bill Negotiator

Clarity Money utilizes artificial intelligence to negotiate lower bills such as cable, internet, and phone by contacting providers on your behalf. If the platform succeeds in securing some savings, it charges a one-time fee of 33% of the amount saved. The process is optional and only proceeds with user consent. This service saves users the inconvenience of negotiating on their own.

Truebill provides users with access to their entire credit record and credit score, as well as tools for monitoring, understanding, and enhancing their credit health. Users receive real-time updates and alerts whenever their credit score changes, helping them to stay on top of important credit factors, including payment history, credit usage, and account age.

Winner: Truebill wins for its broader negotiation coverage, including overdraft refunds and insurance rate comparisons, while Clarity Money is limited to select bills and charges 33% of the savings fee.

5. Credit Score Monitoring

The score monitoring service by Clarity Money allows users to monitor their Experian-powered VantageScore 3.0 for free, with monthly updates. While not comparable to the score used by lenders, it offers vital insights into how habits and credit usage affect overall financial health, assisting users in staying informed and credit aware.

Truebill gives users access to their entire credit record and credit score, as well as tools for monitoring, understanding, and improving their credit health. Users receive real-time updates and alerts whenever their credit score changes, helping them to stay on top of important credit factors, including payment history, credit usage, and account age.

Winner: Truebill wins here. Both platforms offer free credit score tracking. However, Truebill features real-time alerts and deeper credit health insights, giving it a clear edge over Clarity Money's static, once-a-month updates.

Clarity Vs Truebill: Cost Breakdown

Clarity Money employs a free-to-use pricing model, enabling users to establish and maintain accounts with no monthly costs. The platform generates revenue through referral relationships, earning fees when users select the financial products it recommends, such as loans from Goldman Sachs Bank USA. This indirect monetization enabled customers to utilize Clarity Money's budgeting tools, credit score tracking, and bill negotiation capabilities at no cost. 

Disclaimer: The pricing is sourced through a third-party website and is subject to change.  

Truebill offers the following flexible and user-friendly pricing options:  

  • Free Plan: $0/month 

The core software is 100% free and includes account linking, budgeting, and subscription tracking. 

  • Premium Membership: $6 – $12/month (user-selected) 

The Premium plan features include unlimited budgets, premium support, smart savings, real-time syncing, and shared household access, along with a 7-day free trial. 

  • Bill Negotiation: 35–60% of first-year savings (user-chosen fee) 

This specialist-led service charges a separate, success-based fee of 35-60% of the first-year savings, which is only paid if they successfully secure a better rate for you. 

Disclaimer: The pricing is subject to change.   

Bottom Line: Which App Offers Better Value?

Clarity and Truebill (now called Rocket Money) both offer robust personal finance tools, but individuals need to determine their overall value.  

Clarity is an excellent solution for users seeking a free, intuitive budgeting platform with basic capabilities, such as subscription tracking and debt assistance, especially those who do not require extensive customization. 

On the other hand, Truebill stands out as a more comprehensive solution for users seeking deeper insights, real-time tracking, greater automation, and broader financial services such as net worth tracking and shared household access.  

If you'd like to explore further, you can visit our resource center and browse the options listed there.